Amiss
by Aprill May
Summary: [MS DarkWeird] Lie to me. Make me whole. Cry. Love. As long as we're together.
1. Missense

_Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha._

**A/N: **This is the first part of a series of three oneshots I dub, "Something Amiss." Deals with the aftermath of Kohaku's death. First part is in Sango's point of view, second is from Miroku, and third is a shared perspective. Dark, along the lines of most of my recent oneshots. Comments loved and appreciated. -- May

* * *

--

-

**Missense**

-

--

White lies.

Black lies.

Right lies.

Wrong lies.

Tell me one thousand more, spilling from your lips in an infinite stream.

It feeds me; feeds the brushfires forming on my skin, drowns my awareness in doubt and shattered glass.

Sometimes it takes minutes, hours, even days. He is reliant and expectant and so am I, because with an effective dousing of sand my fires are extinguished.

My anger has no place in our relationship. My anger is all that there is.

I cannot recall the last time he has ever raised his voice at me, if he has at all. He has never harmed me physically, be it in lieu of his emotions or not. I cannot recall . . .

He is always gentle and patient with me, and I am everything else.

But he has his very own form of abuse, and that is his words. I gather them close to me, crush them to my breast and make them a part of me. They will haunt me in my sleep, joining memories of my brother's smile.

There is always an ember; a single glowing ember. He exhales upon it a lie, and I am alit once more.

His smile is gentle. His eyes are kind.

I fear his truths are lies.

--

Our world is stained by a fascinating palate of shades.

The mantle of my cheeks as he tells his falsities, the pellucid blue of his eyes as they convince me he is sincere. My clothing, sanguine and becoming against the torpid darkness I exude in anger, and in battle.

I hear him approach and feel the rough roundness of the beads as they press against my skin.

_Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama. _

"What can I do for you, Sango?"

Can you say that you are not worthy of me?

Say it, as a mere joke or as a hidden truth, " '_I'm not worthy_.' "

Yet throw those words away with one fleeting twist of your hand. A twist of your hand and a contraction of your cursed fingers.

"I should have killed him." I am not speaking to him. I am speaking to the night, the air, and Kirara. For they cannot respond, and they show their opinion of my words in silence. Silence that is eerie, and comforting.

"If you kill him, you will never have a chance to revive him."

You, my voice of reason, the calm in the eye of the storm. You forget, dear holy man, that chaos surrounds you. The first breath of air you take is your saviour, the first breeze past your ears is your panic.

"Do I even want him revived?"

Mould yourself to me, let your heart become mine, and you will see, that you can never feel empathy for me. You have lived with the knowledge of your death for years -- many, many years.

And you can never _force_yourself to feel.

"It was all you thought of for days, months, Sango. Not a moment passes where you wonder about him, what he is doing now, what he should be doing now."

"And if he were dead, dead like he is supposed to be, I would wonder no longer."

He falls into a lapse of silence. Sometimes I think he always knows what to say to me, but now I know, it is that he knows when not to say anything.

"Do you think that he should be revived at the expense of his sanity? It is times like these, monk, when my selfishness overrides reason."

_Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama._

"Is love a selfish thing?" I didn't realize I had spoken the words aloud.

"The teaching is that love possesses four qualities." He straightened, preparing to preach. "There's loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy,andfreedom."

Crossing his legs, I ignored the way he inauspiciously neared me, becoming my shadow. "Do you not show Kohaku all four of those things?"

I didn't answer.

"It is a selfless love. You are so bound to him that you feel selfish."

_Tell me a lie, Houshi-sama._

Fury and despair, pain and anguish, they are intertwined with what you say is a selfless love. Love, laced with threads of bleeding pain, is not love.

"Thank you." I say it again, a whisper.

--

His body is wrapped in his purple kesa. Tufts of his thick black hair peek out from beneath the fabric, no longer matted with blood.

Houshi-sama has his staff positioned around my waist, and I am gripping the body of my brother as close to me as possible.

"He is at peace, Sango."

_Tell me a lie, a white lie._

My first steps into my village are weighted, not with Kohaku's corpse, but with the tears that will not leave my eyes, no matter how much I want them to.

There is a tear in my battle attire, and it stretches as I fall to my knees in the hardened dirt. I pull the swaddling around him, and touch his whitened face; the trail of crusted blood around his mouth; the wounds that will not bleed, can not bleed.

The feelings, laced with unbleeding pain and poison tipped arrows, engulfs me, and I hold him.

And Houshi-sama is there, holding me so softly, so gently. He is afraid that if he is too rash, I will shatter; if he is too gentle, I will crumble.

Thus, he has no choice.

--

While he is reciting the prayers, I am shamefully disrespectful.

He ignores me, the way I am tearing at my hair, drawing blood from my skin as I dig my nails into my arms painfully.

He continues his prayers unwavering, as I find myself amongst the dirt again.

Again.

There are two white flowers on his grave. My hand rests over their stems and I am lying beside him, holding the dirt close to me.

I remember my chamber of darkness and death, and I escaped it, for a breath of air and life.

Now it is my unattainable sanctuary.

He heaves me upwards around my waist, after night has long fallen and I have not moved.

"It is not your time to die."

_Tell me a lie, a black lie._

--

It does not hurt while he washes my wounds.

Kohaku re-opened the scar, his last memory before death. A final memory.

And you say he is at peace?

"Sango." Rarely he talks while he is tending to me. "Would you allow me to . . . to record the history of the taijiya?"

My face is turned away from him, and he has coiled my hair and placed it over my shoulder as not to get in his way.

His fingers gently lift my chest, coming dangerously close to my breasts, and I hold myself upward, as he wraps my body with strips of cloth.

"Do what you wish, Houshi-sama."

To forget is what caused Kohaku's downfall. I will not lie. I will remember.

--

One evening, he chooses to leave me, thinking I am asleep.

I stare at the sky, so visible through the cracked roof. Why he chose this house to take shelter in, I do not know. One tremor of the earth, and it would crush us, the ruins of ruins falling upon our heads.

I wonder how he knew this was my home.

I move quietly, falling upon my brother's grave in my robe of white. It becomes dirty and moist, as I grab the cold earth with all I have, wanting to unearth him and bury ourselves together. I could not save him.

_Aneue -- I'm so scared._

I could not save him.

"It is not your fault, Sango."

He is not yelling, but he is saying it harshly, gripping me tightly, and wrapping his legs around mine so I will not struggle.

I grow limp, and then I tremble.

He brings me inside, and covers me with a blanket. I tell him to go outside and reform Kohaku's grave which I have defaced in my agony. He refuses.

At that moment, I look towards it, tainted with my anger, ruined with my repudiation.

I ask him again to fix it, and he holds me and asks me to sleep.

--

The evening came when I was physically well again.

Previously, he'd spend his nights holding a brush to parchment and reading portions of his text aloud. I'd nod, I'd approve, I'd reminisce.

His words really are beautiful.

Today he pushed the unfinished manuscripts aside, instead gathering me in his arms and kissing my cheek softly.

And today I had remembered a story about a friend I had been trying to recall for some time.

Nevertheless, I respond. Without my brother, without my father, without my friends, I have but one outlet of which to draw love.

And I will feed off of his until he can no longer give.

In a strange hunger, I claw at him and demand.

The stories are scattered. The air is cold.

There is a shadow that looms over the ruins that are our sanctity.

_I love you_.

Our insanity.

You _lie. _

Your lies are so achingly beautiful.

The black is ink, and I am pristine, pure, paper.

But when the ink reaches me, it fades into grey.

And we lie.


	2. Misstep

_Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha._

**A/N: **Miroku character butchering, yay. Or not. Written while I was in one of my moods. Rewritten many, many times because I wasn't sure what was going on and I still don't know. I don't like the order of phrases at the end. If anyone wants to rearrange those in a better way, feel free. Umm. Happy Holidays. -- May

* * *

**  
--**

**-**

**Misstep**

**-**

**--**

A cycle.

Life. Death. Passion. Fear. Obsession.

The words, they circle and chase, colliding with one another and breaking apart.

Life. Death. Passion. Fear. Obsession.

_Life _strives to outrun_ Death_, which looms over_ Life's_ head and engulfs it in darkness.

_Passion_ is sought, and crushed close to one's heart, before the_ Fear_ of the outcome of_ Passion_ becomes _Obsession_, and all three are lost.

Perhaps _Fear_ is remaining.

_Everything that exists is filled with suffering_.

The rule is personified in her.

I long to understand, to be able to take all that pain and absorb it into as deep a void as Kazaana.

_Suffering is caused by desires_.

Am I suffering? I desire much, so much.

One, to become her pain so that she will no longer bear it.

Two, to have her in every way I wish, with her consent, and her wholeness.

Countless other things. Countless since the day I travelled alone.

And as she holds the dead shell of Kohaku, I realize, disgusted with myself, that my desire may be attainable yet.

--

_You can get rid of suffering by stifling all desire_

I am wrong.

With him, part of her is dead.

Then I can never have her fully.

Greed. I am so blind with but a taste of desire.

I rush to hold her, perhaps break her, in hopes I can put her together again the way she should be.

The way we should be.

But something stops me. Something always stops me.

--

She allows me to hold her at night, now that we have returned to her village.

I chose the house in the centre of the village, with barely a roof above and walls around us. From the ground where we slept Sango could see the row of graves.

She always faced away from me at night, watching them, as if a ghost would rise from the ground and her village would be alive again.

I wondered if she slept. She held my hands, she held my body close to hers, but did she sleep?

--

_The Noble Eightfold Path leads to the end of suffering_.

With all my knowledge of that path, of those rules, I can not end my suffering. I force it upon myself. Maybe I do enjoy the pain.

If I cannot end my own, how can I even begin to end hers?

--

I can see her standing there.

At first she is standing, then she is on her knees, and then she is falling.

And I can see in her eyes; she is trying to find -- anywhere.

I keep talking, I keep praying. I must stay calm. I must calm the boy's soul.

She is holding two white flowers in her hand, and her palms are coated with dirt. Flowers in her hands, but does she know why?

--

What can I tell her? What advice will help? What -- if anything -- will help?

"It is not your time to die."

My only offered advice. Sango, please don't try and deceive me.

She is still in my arms, and limp. Her chest barely moves with her breaths. Without saying anything, I feel her small, cold hands clamp around my wrists. I move my mouth closer to her ear. "We're together now."

--

Why doesn't she cry?

Her wounds are still bleeding freely, and I try and work fast to cover them again so that she does not get sick.

Even as I am swirling the cloths in a fresh basin, watching the water bleed red, I know that the pain in her body is immense. I glance at her.

She is not moving. Her eyes focus on me, sparkling with _something_. I don't know what it is.

She never cries.

--

Another baseless attack rattled the outer fortifications of the village.

I didn't want to disturb Sango, so I gently touched her cheek and whispered that I'd be back. I placed wards on the outer walls again.

As the large remains of the house I had chosen for us came into view, I worried she had awoken alone. I began to run.

That's when I saw her. Drowning.

She was drowning in her own visions.

_Pull her away. I have to pull her away from the past._

As I lift her, we fall backwards, but the softened morning dirt cushions the impact on my back.

"It's not your fault." I say it over and over, a mantra. I hold her to me and will some of my strength into her. "It's not your fault."

There were no wards, no amulets I could produce that would keep away the demons, the black cats that stalked us in the night, peeking over the graves.

She shivered that night. She begged me to smooth the depressions we had made in the cemetery outside our ruined home. I held her. I asked her to sleep.

I made sure she faced me that night.

I made sure we did not lay to the North.

--

I want to write about her.

I want to have memories, and I want to share the memories with whoever I can, whoever we cross paths with.

She is remarkable. Her body, bleeding and broken, is beautiful. Though she whispers in her dreams, that after Naraku there is nothing, she is wrong.

I spent many a night on the stories.

I persuaded her to tell me anything, even things that were completely unrelated to the taijiya story, such as water fights in the sun, a stern lecturing on keeping one's robes clean, family honour.

She'd tell them in portions, jumping from one to the next, and I hurriedly tried to capture the glaze in her eyes as she spoke, the way her body relaxed and calmed. Then while she slept, I rearranged her stories and laced them with her emotions, the best way that I could.

Then one night, we would cross the line into the stories that fell close to the event that brought forth the downfall. We were crossing that line for her, and us.

We would unearth the past for her, and bury it; bury it one last time.

--

Please cry for me.

I see her standing there, looking for anything -- anywhere.

I see her pain, I see her wounds, I see her blood.

She never cries.

It is frustrating. I am a selfish human being, who by all means should be suffering right now. Instead she is, while I am off in a world of desire.

We both have desires.

We are both suffering.

I am _free_. I can _live_. I am fated to be with a girl who is plagued by _death_.

If I could meet Fate one day, I'd like to force it down Kazaana.

I make my own destiny.

--

Our story is not finished yet.

Selfishly, I reach for her. I let the robes pool about our waists and I kiss her. Softly, gently, and then harshly. I need this.

Her hands tense and tighten, touching skin. The moon is so high tonight. It exaggerates our shadows and makes our outlines pale.

She looks up at me, asking something. I don't know what. I don't know what to say to her.

_I love you_.

If she cried then, I would not know what to make of it. She met me halfway. The tears formed, but never fell.

Then we tumbled onto the cold floor of our haven, and I rubbed her arms because she shivered.

_Forget the meditations, Right Concentration, Noble Truths, Eightfold Paths . . . If I forget why there should be, I'll never feel that dissatisfaction of unfulfilled desires. _

She is finally whole.

--

Life.

It is what I have struggled for, and that wish is fulfilled. Now I struggle for her to be alive.

Death.

Is what is at our backs at every turn. Mercenary youkai, the remains of a village, the blanket of murder. Ghosts that will forever watch us.

Passion.

She harbours this for me, I the same. I want her, I want her to be whole. I want to be what she has lost since we met.

Fear.

I fear for her, I fear losing her and she fears the same. We can do nothing but show one another strength, our vain attempts at empowerment. I want to be her foundation, and she is my anchor. She will keep me tied to the realities of tragedy.

Obsession.

She says it over and over. _Love me_. She is zealous and demanding, and I want nothing more than to bind her to me for eternity. _Love me_. I want to make her whole again.

_Love me._

I do.

Disintegration.

I will not stand here and watch.

_I know that pain inside the truth. It is familiar. _

_It is ours. _


End file.
